Re: This
is really creepy

: : : Perhaps to allow several burials on one site.
The common practice in Britain until the early Victorian times was to reuse graves
without always removing the previous occupant(s)! Church grave yards became the
site of numerous scattered bones. As a result the law was changed to allow burials
to take place in non-consecrated ground - the Victorian public cemetery was born.
Never-the-less, the custom of burial six feet down continued. Today only two burials
are allowed in one family grave; thus the first has to be deep enough to allow
the second. Since almost all of our cemeteries are full in Britain, then most
people are cremated and their ashes scattered. A few years ago I was able to purchase
a plot in my local beautiful Victorian cemetery for my father - it was one of
7 newly discovered unused plots.
: : : In Germany and other countries the system
is different and the graves are reused every 25 or 50 years - the bones are placed
in a charnell house.
: : : How do I know all these things? I'm a pathologist
with a German wife!

: : Just between us...there was an argument at a family
funeral about the depth of the grave. I am changing the names to protect the guilty.

: : Before his death, John asked his nephew Sam to make sure his grave was
at least six feet deep. John said he didn't want to be "buried on top of the ground
like a cow."

: : After John died, Sam talked to the gravediggers and was assured
that the grave would be dug properly. Right before the funeral he checked and
found out he'd been lied to. I won't go into what happened next but it wasn't
pretty.

: : In New Orleans, because the city is actually built below sea-level,
graves and crypts were above ground. Due to the summer heat and humidity the corpse
would decompose rapidly and the remaining remains would simply be pushed to the
back of the crypt where they would fall through a slot in the floor and collect
in a lower compartment. The crypt was then ready for its next occupant. Imagine
the confusion on "Judgement Day!"

I bought a new book over the weekend and found
another reason for deep burial:

"In Northern Europe, drastic measures served
to prevent the dead from haunting the living. Frequently, a dead man's body was
bound and his feet and head were amputated.While burial six feet underground was
viewed as a good precaution, entombment first in a wooden coffin was even safer.
Nailing down the lid afforded additional protection." From "Panati's Extraordinary
Origins of Everyday Things" by Charles Panati (Harper & Row, New York, 1987. Reissued
1989)